Raven Darkholme To Tell The Truth

December 29, 1985|By John DeGroot, Staff Writer

Raven Darkholme alias Thilo Deveraux alias David Peters is alive and well and working in Kansas City, Kansas. ``Please say hello to everyone in Fort Lauderdale and tell them I`m trying very hard to put my life back together,`` reports the strange young man who became a South Florida media sensation with his tall tales of abuse and abandonment (Sept. 16, 1984).

In therapy and on probation for his fraud conviction in Florida, David Peters today says he has re-established ties with his Episcopal priest father. ``All I want to do is leave Raven Darkholme in the comic books where she belongs,`` Peters says.

The saga of Peters` multiple identities began in July 1983, when Fort Lauderdale police reported that they`d found a lost 16-year-old boy in the Trailways bus station. He gave his name as Raven Darkholme, and claimed a beautiful red-headed woman named Amanda had adopted him after his mother died. The two had spent years criss-crossing the country as gypsies.

Then the mysterious Amanda had abandoned this strangely pretty boy, leaving him penniless. Darkholme lived in a shelter for troubled youths until reporters a telephone tip that the youth had assumed the identity of a female superhero in Marvel comics. Authorities transferred ``Raven`` to a hospital mental ward, where he told them he was really a 16-year-old orphan named Thilo Devereaux and that he`d been supporting himself as a male prostitute.

Thilo was put in state Health and Rehabilitative Services custody and enrolled in the 11th grade. It took months for the whole truth to come out: Raven/Thilo was actually a 19-year-old drifter salesman named David Peters. He had emotional problems confronting his homosexuality, which he had hidden from his father.

Peters was charged with criminal fraud for posing as a juvenile and accepting more than $3,000 worth of services from the HRS. He had served less than a year of his five-year probation when he was charged with shoplifting a rock music tape.

Although facing a possible 30 months in prison for violating his probation, Peters was returned to the custody of his father. That was more than a year ago. ``Things are going pretty good for me,`` David Peters says today. ``But I think it`ll be a while before I come back to Fort Lauderdale.``